A year ago, Alesandra Dulgheru came out of nowhere as a qualifier and won the Warsaw Open, her first Sony Ericsson WTA tour tournament. This was an unusual feat, and was followed by months of near-obscurity for the Romanian. But all she needed was for clay season to come around again. In Barcelona, Dulgheru reached the semifinals, and she defeated both Dinara Safina and Elena Dementieva, in Rome and Madrid, respectively.
Yesterday, the unseeded Dulgheru upset 3rd seed Li Na in the semifinals of the Polsat Warsaw Open, and today she upset 5th seed Zheng Jie, 6-3, 6-4, to win her second consecutive Warsaw title. Along the way, Dulgheru defeated Kateryna Bondarenko, Timea Bacsinszky and Tsvetana Pironkova.
The unseeded team of Virginia Ruano Pascual and Meghann Shaughnessy won the doubles title. They defeated top seeds Cara Black and Yan Zi 6-3, 6-4. This is Ruano Pascual's 43rd doubles title, and Shuaghnessy's 16th.
I got my eye on her.
ReplyDeleteThis quite an oddity--defending a title in which one is unseeded both years.
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